Weale was born in
Marylebone, London, in 1832 as the son of James Weale (died 1838) and Susan de Vezian (died 1855). His father was the librarian to
John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield and had a large book collection of his own. Weale studied at
King's College London between 1843 and 1848. He was the headmaster at a school in
Islington. In 1854, he married Helena Amelia Walton, and the next year, after the death of his mother, they moved to Bruges. In 1865 Weale founded together with
Guido Gezelle the magazine
Rond den Heerd. The same year, he formed the
Société Archéologique in Bruges. Other magazines he founded were
Le Beffroi and
La Flandre, and he also published in major art and literary magazines such as
Athenaeum and the
Gazette des Beaux-Arts. In 1864 he curated an exhibition on ecclesiastical art in
Mechelen, and in 1867 he organised the first exhibition around the Flemish Primitives in Bruges, for which he also wrote the catalogues. In 1872, Weale catalogued the Flemish pottery at the
Victoria and Albert Museum (then named the South Kensington Museum) where he became a curator in 1874. In 1879, he returned to England with his family and founded there the Guild of Saint Gregory and Saint Luke. He became the curator of the library of the South Kensington Museum in 1890, where he remained until his retirement in 1897. He started writing artist biographies, with one on
Gerard David appearing in 1895, another about
Hans Memling in 1901, and a final and most ambitious one on the
Van Eyck brothers in 1908, with a revised edition in 1912. Meanwhile, in 1902, he organised the ambitious
Exposition des primitifs flamands à Bruges, the largest exposition of works by Early Netherlandish painters up till then, which was groundbreaking and the source of many publications and research. Weale died on 26 April 1917 in
Clapham Common, London and was buried at the church of St. Mary Magdalene,
Mortlake, near Richmond in Surrey. When his sister, Charlotte, a keen Anglican, died in 1918 she left instructions that no Roman Catholics should be allowed in her house after she died. ==Works==